


Open Pneumothorax

by Aaron_The_8th_Demon



Series: A Combination Of Skill And Luck [8]
Category: Twin Peaks
Genre: Angst, Blood and Gore, Gunshot Wounds, M/M, Pre-Slash, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-16
Updated: 2020-05-16
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:34:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24219712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aaron_The_8th_Demon/pseuds/Aaron_The_8th_Demon
Summary: Only Dale Cooper could manage to get himself shot during a fishing trip.
Relationships: Dale Cooper/Harry Truman
Series: A Combination Of Skill And Luck [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1617793
Comments: 12
Kudos: 46





	Open Pneumothorax

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is rated M for a gory, gruesome injury.

“Hey, Coop.”

“Yes, Harry?”

He points, temporarily pausing in pulling fishing gear out of his truck. “That look off to you, too?”

A couple hundred yards up the beach is one of those lake houses. There’s nothing special about it, they’ve come here fishing a few times whenever Dale’s not out working a case and the house has stayed the same. Today, though, the door is hanging open. That’s not normal.

“It seems suspicious,” Dale agrees, nodding. “I don’t think any harm could come of us taking a brief detour to investigate.”

The stuff gets put back in Harry’s truck and he closes the hatch before they head over. Side-by-side, when Harry glances over Dale’s eyes are darting around, seeing probably four dozen different clues pointing to how this vacant house got disturbed.

“What do you think?” Harry murmurs as they get close.

“Drugs,” is his friend’s immediate answer.

“On Black Lake?”

“We’re near the border, Harry.”

“Right…”

They don’t have their badges. They don’t have their guns. They’re still law enforcement, even on their day off. It’s annoying. All Harry wanted to do was have a fishing trip with his best friend. With cases coming and going, in a year and some change since Dale came to Twin Peaks the first time (and ultimately moved up here to live permanently) Harry doesn’t get to see him that often, he’ll be home for maybe a week and a half and then be gone again anywhere from two to five weeks at a time. Once in awhile he’ll call Harry from his various hotel rooms, to talk about his current job or just to talk at all. But it’s unusual right now, this is day sixteen in a row that Dale’s been home. That _never_ happens.

“They may still be here,” Dale frowns, whispering now that they’re less than ten feet from the door.

“You wanna try and catch ’em in the act?” Harry guesses.

“If at all possible.”

“Alright, after you, Coop.”

The door hangs half-open in its frame and Dale, being nimble and a little leaner than Harry, slips through without a sound. Harry, meanwhile, used to play football and doesn’t do subtle very well… he bumps the damn thing and it creaks, just a little. Maybe whoever’s inside didn’t hea-

He can’t even finish that thought when the noise of a small explosion pounds through the empty house, almost deafening him. There’s a second one, and a third, and he recognizes the sounds of a handgun finally. His ears are ringing. Whoever shot at them was pretty close by, he can just barely catch footsteps bolting away. He’s about to chase after them when Dale stumbles backwards into him so heavily they almost both get knocked over. And then Harry sees him drop to the floor.

Everything snaps into a state of wrongness immediately when Dale hits the dusty carpet. Harry’s trying to say something, but he can’t even really hear himself yet. Guns are so damn loud. But Dale’s acting funny, too, he’s curling in on himself, not getting up. His hands didn’t used to be that color… Harry’s seen this before, kinda. And like with the gunshots it takes him a little bit to place everything.

“Ohmygod, _Dale,_ ” he yells, loud enough he can actually hear his own voice again as his kneecaps slam heavily into the floor.

Harry grabs him, unfolds him to see what’s going on. There’s a big dark spot on the flannel so he tears that open, not caring about the buttons. A sleeveless white undershirt which is turning red, Harry yanks that up to Dale’s armpits and finds a hole which is gushing and bubbling. Oh, god. Oh, god. That’s his chest, that’s his lung. There’s air coming out of his lung through the hole.

Dale’s hands grab Harry’s arms, squeezing hard enough to bruise. His face is red, he’s crying and gasping for breath and drooling blood. He probably can’t talk like this and Harry might not hear him anyway. But in place of his voice, his eyes are screaming: _It hurts. I’m scared. It hurts so bad. Don’t let me die._

Harry tries to get him up by pulling his wrists so they can walk back to the truck, but he can’t. Harry’s arms and hands wrap around under his back to take more of his weight, lift him by his chest - no dice. Dale can’t get up. He’s not going anywhere on his own. Harry doesn’t know what to do, he’s never dealt with this before. Neither of them has a radio, there’s no way to get help. The only radio is in the truck. Harry has to get Dale to the truck. Yeah. That’s it, that’s the goal: get Dale back to his truck.

But how the hell can he do that when Dale can’t stand up and walk?

Harry will have to carry him. That’s too much for his arms for very long, Dale’s skinny but right now is a hundred and sixty five pounds of limp, dead weight. Dragging him will take too long. Harry hates this. Fireman-carrying Dale will really hurt, it might even make the injury worse, but… there’s nothing else. His back and his shoulders are stronger than his arms.

“Dale,” he says, barely hearing himself. Are Dale’s ears ringing, too? “Dale. Listen. I’m gonna have to pick you up and carry you. It’s really gonna hurt but I have to so I can get you outta here. Just… just try to stay calm, okay? Don’t thrash around or anything, it’ll just make it harder for me to hang onto you.”

He’s not sure Dale heard him. He didn’t catch half his own words and Dale had a coughing fit, which sent more blood droplets spattering everywhere. Harry feels a couple land on his face and rubs his cheek on his shoulder. There’s so much blood, Dale’s bleeding really bad from his chest and there’s bubbles there in the red mess. The veins in his neck are popping out. Harry gathers him up, going slowly and trying to be as gentle as possible. Even with his hearing as screwed up as it is, Dale’s yelps and sobs of agony don’t get by him.

Harry’s got Dale by an arm and a leg, and standing up from the floor stays bent forward as much as possible. He can feel Dale breathing wrong against his back, jerky and too quick even without the crying. His hearing is coming back a little, Dale’s breaths even _sound_ wrong. Harry wants to run but he can’t, Dale’s too heavy. And even if he could run it would probably hurt more for his friend.

It’s six hundred feet or so from the house to the truck… about two football fields. Harry has crossed many football fields. This doesn’t feel like two football fields, it feels like a thousand football fields. He can’t get Dale to his truck fast enough.

Harry lets go of Dale’s arm to open the passenger door. He’s not really sure how he actually gets his friend into the seat, the positioning is all weird and Dale sure as hell doesn’t try to make it easier. Harry slams the door shut again and bolts for the driver’s side, jumping into his own seat and turning the engine. He’s already speeding back towards the highway with his lights going before he can get a hand on his radio and talk to the hospital.

Dale makes a gruesome sucking noise every time he breathes, a disgusting wet sound that makes Harry want to throw up. Sometimes he starts gurgling, too, and then interrupts his own crying by coughing and drooling more blood. What gets even more scary is when these noises start to go away on their own - Harry’s pretty sure that’s really, really bad. When Dale stops sobbing it seems like he’s just too tired to keep doing it, nothing has actually improved. The coughs and nasty wet sucking noise get weaker, he drools even more blood. When Harry glances over he’s getting pale and looks like he might be sweating. His undershirt is so soaked in gore that it can’t take in any more and the red beads are starting to run down and drip into the top of his pants.

“Coop?”

A thin whimper answers from the passenger seat.

“Coop, hang on, we’re almost there.”

It takes forever.

It takes god damn forever for Harry to hit the parking lot at Calhoun Memorial Hospital outside the emergency department. There’s people waiting there and Dale’s not really moving, his fingernails are blue and as they haul him onto a gurney they ask him questions - he only whines quietly in reply.

Harry’s shaking all over as he also gets out of the truck, closing both the doors and trailing slowly after them when they’ve already disappeared inside the building. He wants to find Dale right away, to make sure Dale’s getting fixed.

“Sheriff Truman, we can’t allow you into the trauma section.”

Oh. A nurse. Her hand is on his arm, stopping him.

“But…”

“I’m sorry, Sheriff. No exceptions. We have a waiting area…”

And he gets pointed there. Harry sits quietly in a chair in the corner, watching as the other very few visitors are eventually called in to see their loved ones. He’s never called. He just stays where he is, waiting, while his shirt gets itchy in the spots where it’s glued to his chest and back. He’s still shaking a little, too. He never expected this to happen. And… oh, god, he told Dale to go first. Maybe he should’ve gone first instead, then Dale wouldn’t have been shot right in the lung like that.

Harry remembers back to when they found Dale wounded in the hotel room. That was so different. Dale saw them and lost consciousness - Harry immediately ran in and tried to wake him up again, yelling and shaking him and slapping both sides of his face. Dale didn’t wake up until later, in the hospital, after the bullet got pulled out and his liver was sewn up. He’d been so calm.

Why was this different?

Dale was so scared. It was written all over his face in that damn house, his eyes were huge and he didn’t stop crying until they were almost back in town. And that, right now, scares Harry. He’s never seen Dale get scared like that. So now Harry gets to sit here, being afraid. What if he took too long getting his friend here? What if they can’t fix Dale? What if Dale d-

“Harry.”

His head jerks up - it’s Doc Hayward, now moving to sit in the next chair over.

“Will…”

“We got him on the table. Once he’s out of surgery he’ll be here for at least a week, maybe longer.”

“What was going on? He couldn’t even talk to me in the car…”

“His lung collapsed and the pleural cavity was starting to fill up with blood. He was going into hypovolemic shock when you got him here.”

“Is he gonna be okay?”

“Well, like I said, he’s in surgery now. They’re going to repair the wounds and he’ll have a chest tube for a few days to help his lung reinflate, we’ve given him a blood transfusion already too. He’ll probably be alright eventually.” Doc Hayward gives him a concerned frown. “It’ll be awhile before you can see him, why don’t you… why don’t you go home and get cleaned up?”

“Oh. Yeah, I…”

Harry looks down at himself - he’s a disaster. His flannel and his undershirt are soaked through and now dried with Dale’s blood. It’s all over his arms, too, and especially his hands. Some of it got on his pants. How the _hell_ did it get on his pants?! All his clothes will have to get thrown away, he needs a shower, he’s covered in his best friend’s blood and-

Harry pitches forward in the chair and throws up all over the floor.

“Sorry,” he mumbles afterwards, wiping his mouth on a reasonably clean part of his sleeve. “Sorry.”

“It’s alright. Just go home, get some fresh clothes. Drink some water, maybe try to eat something. I promise the second I hear anything about Agent Cooper, you’re the first one I’ll call.”

“Thanks, Will.”

“When you do come back to see him, it’d be really helpful if you can bring something for him to wear when he goes home. We had to cut his clothes all up to get them off him while we were stabilizing him.”

“Okay.”

Harry finally gets up and leaves. He hates doing it. He wants to be where Dale is, so that he knows what’s going on. There’s blood all over the inside of his truck, too… not as much as what’s in his clothes, but smears of it on the door and the passenger seat. He does his best not to look at that while he drives and when he’s home he strips down to his underwear in the driveway so that he won’t bring most of this awful mess inside with him. Straight to the bathroom, his socks and boxer-briefs come off and then he’s in the shower without even waiting for the water to warm up. It runs red off his hands and chest, so he closes his eyes and keeps scrubbing with the bar of soap until his skin starts to hurt.

Finally the water gets turned off again and Harry gets dressed. He makes phone calls, first to Gordon Cole and then to Hawk. He can’t be at work for a couple days after this, he needs time to deal with it. Harry tries to eat a sandwich but he can’t take a single bite. His stomach is locked up in a vice.

It feels like it takes way too long for the phone to ring.

“Hello?”

“Harry, it’s Will.”

“Is he alive?” Harry demands.

“Yes, he made it off the table and they’re about to move him from recovery to a ward. You can come see him now if you want, but you need to be quiet and don’t try to make him talk too much. He may be asleep when you come in, and if he is you shouldn’t try to wake him up.”

“Okay. Thanks, Will.”

“You’re welcome.”

On the way to his truck, Harry gathers his ruined clothes out of the driveway and dumps them in his trash bin. It’s too bad, he liked that flannel…

Back at the hospital. They direct him to Dale’s room, which turns out to be one of the rare private ones. Harry comes in slowly and closes the door behind him.

“Hey, Coop.”

“Harry,” Dale croaks in reply through the oxygen mask. “The painkillers they have in this facility are exceptional.”

“Hey, don’t talk so much, you need to let your lung get better,” Harry says, sitting beside the bed.

Dale is alive, awake, and talking. He still looks absolutely horrifying. There’s an IV and a bag of blood, and the blankets are only up to his waist. The patient gown covers just the left side of his body, it’s pushed out of the way for the tube stuck inside his chest which has blood and fluids draining through it. He breathes from a wall hookup. At least he’s not white as a sheet with blue fingertips anymore.

“I don’t like oxygen masks,” Dale comments idly. “I don’t like them.”

“Well…”

“So they injected another medication into my fluid line.”

“Coop, don’t talk so much.”

“I don’t mind the mask as much now…”

“Dale, you shouldn’t talk so much, they just had to sew up your lung again and you gotta let it heal.”

“I wish they had given me this drug earlier. It was frightening, Harry… I couldn’t breathe.”

“I know.”

“And you seemed extremely terrified. But that’s alright, I’m still here.”

“Yeah. Coop-”

“I’m glad you were there with me, Harry. The first time I suffered a gunshot wound, I was alone for several hours.”

“Dale-”

“Thank you, Harry.”

“You’re welcome. Now stop talking before you hurt yourself.”

“Harry I love you.”

That freezes him. “You… what?”

Dale limply waves his arm around over the side of the bed until finding one of Harry’s hands and grabbing on. “I love you.”

“Well… how do you mean? Albert said that to me once, too.”

“No. Not like how Albert does. I would like very much for you to lie down over here and cuddle me but there appear to be a number of wires and tubes in the way, which would make it very inconvenient for you.”

“Coop, I… I don’t know what to say.”

Dale’s probably just acting like this because he’s doped up on diazepam. That must be it, it’s the only explanation. Harry tries so hard to feel relieved when he realizes it, but he doesn’t. Actually that thought kind of makes this worse.

“You smell like soap.”

Yup, Dale’s definitely high on really good hospital drugs right now.

“Yeah, I took a shower. You need to not get shot ever again, Coop.”

“I make no promises.”

“I’m serious, Dale. You scared me. I didn’t know what to do…”

That admission chokes him and Harry frantically covers his face with his free hand. He didn’t know he was about to cry until it started happening. He can’t get those thoughts out of his head, of Dale quietly slipping to the edge of death and then himself covered in gore from carrying Dale around. This was so much worse than the first time.

“Harry, you don’t have to cry over me,” Dale promises from the bed in a loopy voice. “I’m at least eighty percent sure that I’m still alive.”

Harry snorts a laugh through his tears. “What about the other twenty percent, Coop?” he wavers.

“It seems possible I may be in limbo… or dreaming… am I dreaming, Harry?”

“No.” He sucks a hard breath inward and wipes his eyes on the cuff of his sleeve. “You’re not dreaming right now.”

“Oh. Good.” Dale sounds like he’s falling asleep. “I dream about you at times.”

“Okay…”

“They’re good dreams,” his friend promises. “I enjoy dreaming about you, Harry. You’re my favorite thing to dream about.”

“Uh… thanks.”

“I love you, Harry.”

“Coop-”

“The last person I loved this much was Caroline.”

“Well…”

“But it seems unlikely that you would also be stabbed to death,” Dale remarks calmly before immediately falling asleep.

Harry just sits there like an idiot, still holding Dale’s hand. He has no idea what to do with this. A nurse comes in to check Dale’s vitals right then, which interrupts his train of thought for a couple minutes, but after that he’s back to agonizing. What if Dale only said that from being high on painkillers and benzodiazepines? He could not actually mean any of that stuff. And that… hurts. But maybe it’s something he’s been thinking this whole time and has just decided to say it now because he’s not in his right mind, which means… there’s right now a wounded FBI agent sleeping a foot and a half away who’s really, actually in love with Harry.

The implications of the second option are huge.

Harry had to surrender Dale’s hand for the nurse, but now he reaches over slowly and takes hold of it again between both of his palms. And it hits him like a logging truck.

He presses a light kiss to the backs of Dale’s fingers and whispers to them: “I think I love you, too.”

**Author's Note:**

> Hi yeah I have no idea where this fic came from. Why must I torture poor Harry so much?
> 
> All my Twin Peaks fics can be found [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works?utf8=%E2%9C%93&commit=Sort+and+Filter&work_search%5Bsort_column%5D=revised_at&include_work_search%5Brelationship_ids%5D%5B%5D=127943&work_search%5Bother_tag_names%5D=&work_search%5Bexcluded_tag_names%5D=&work_search%5Bcrossover%5D=&work_search%5Bcomplete%5D=&work_search%5Bwords_from%5D=&work_search%5Bwords_to%5D=&work_search%5Bdate_from%5D=&work_search%5Bdate_to%5D=&work_search%5Bquery%5D=&work_search%5Blanguage_id%5D=&user_id=Aaron_The_8th_Demon).
> 
> Comments are welcomed and encouraged :)


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